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lmost everyone knows the winter blues - that dragged-out blah feeling that hits sometime in late winter after a long period of relentless greyness. For most of us, that awful feeling last only a few days - until a new snow or a bright crisp day comes along to break the monotony. But others experience winter blues in a much more profound way. Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is a recognized mental condition - one that can often be debilitating - that mostly affects people in the fall and winter. According to Dr. Edwin Tam, a psychiatrist at the Mood Disorders Clinic at the University of British Columbia, the exact numbers of people who suffer are not known, but one estimate extrapolated from studies done in Ontario is that between one and three per cent of the general population have SAD.

But it looks like 3 a.m.

What causes SAD? There's no proof that one thing accounts for all cases. At first, researchers theorized that the shortened day triggered the onset of the same kind of hibernation effect in some people that animals experience - eating more, fattening up, sleeping more. Certainly, the disorder is connected to the body's circadian rhythm - our internal clocks that time pretty much everything in the body - and how the change in light affects it. "The alarm clock says 7 a.m. but it looks like 3 a.m.," explains Tam. "It could be like your body clock is set for the wrong time, and that accounts for a lot of the fatigue, low energy, difficulty getting up." Another theory, Tam says, is that some people simply need a blast of light to keep things going - "like you need a certain amount of protein, carbs, milk every day to keep things running smoothly."

A particularly long, bad bout of winter weather can make anyone feel low, but the key to diagnosing SAD for doctors is whether a person's mood follows a pattern from one year to the next. "If you're getting depression the same time of year every year roughly and you come out of the depression the same time of year every year and the onset is fall or winter and the offset is spring or summer, we call that winter depression," says Tam. Some people experience the onset of SAD almost immediately following the time change in October.

In addition, when doctors are determining whether someone is suffering from SAD, they look for the same criteria as they expect to find in clinical depression. That means the change must be affecting at a certain number of areas, including:

• Mood
• Enjoyment
• Appetite
• Sleep
• Energy level
• Concentration

Sufferers may also experience feelings of anxiety and despair, low self-esteem or feelings of worthlessness or guilt over past events. Some may even entertain suicidal ideas.

Resist the temptation to hibernate!

If you're prone to feeling blue during the fall and winter, it pays to make a few changes to help keep those feelings to a minimum.

• Try to get outside during the day as much as possible, particularly during the morning or at lunch hour (statistically more people get better on morning light - but any light is better than none). If you have to be working indoors, try to spend as much time as possible near a window;
• Resist hibernation: exercise is a great preventative for any kind of depression. Kill two birds with one stone and exercise out of doors (even a 30-minute walk every morning will provide huge benefits);
• Hold off, as much as you can, on the desire to eat more carbohydrates, such as bread, potatoes and pasta;
• If you continue to feel blue, see your doctor. Certain antidepressant medications have been studied and approved for use in patients suffering from SAD, and cognitive behavioural therapy may also help. Your doctor may also suggest light therapy, which involves looking at a special fluorescent light box - one that emits about 10,000 lux (roughly the equivalent of being outside on a summer morning) - for about half an hour each morning. As many as 70 per cent of people with SAD experience significant alleviation of their symptoms with light therapy.